Lesson 3 — Weighing an Environment: Energy and Trade-Offs

Summary

Learners apply the weighing skill to an environment question — energy and land use — where every option carries a cost. They weigh a dam, a wind farm, and a standing forest, naming benefits and harms for people and the planet, then write a reasoned judgment about one choice.

Objectives

• Apply ethical reasoning to an environment question — weighing benefits and harms for people and the planet — and defend a reasoned judgment. (D09.S1.10.01)

Connection

Every source of energy is also a use of land and water, and every use of land changes who and what can live there. A dam can bring electricity to a whole region but floods a valley where people farmed and fish spawned; a wind farm turns the wind into power but can cut through a bird’s migration path; a forest left standing stores carbon and holds soil but produces no electricity at all. There is no option with zero cost — only trade-offs to be seen clearly and weighed honestly. That is what it means to reason about the environment: not to find a perfect answer, but to see the real costs and decide which ones you can defend.

Materials

• Energy trade-off sheet
• Three short case cards (dam, wind farm, forest)

Preparation

• Copy the trade-off sheet and case cards.
• Retrieval: from Lesson 2, recall the four weighing steps — name the benefit, name the harm, say who gains and who loses, judge. Today we use the same steps on an environment choice.
• Prepare one worked example of weighing a single environment trade-off.

Facilitator note

This lesson is written to the learner (“you”). The idea to land: an environment or energy choice is never cost-free; weighing it means naming benefits and harms for people and for other living systems, then defending a judgment. Reuse the four steps from Lesson 2 (name the benefit; name the harm; say who gains and who loses; judge), so the skill is spaced and reinforced, not re-taught from scratch (S-039). Keep the science honest and hedged: burning fossil fuels releases greenhouse gases that warm the climate (S-005); dams provide power and water but can displace communities and change rivers; wind and solar avoid most operating emissions but use land and materials. Present these as documented effects, not verdicts — and note that people disagree about how to weigh them, which is a question of values, not of fact (philosophy §5). The egalitarian lens: the people who bear a project’s harms (a flooded valley, a felled forest, a polluting plant) are often not the same people who receive its benefits — name that gap. The global lens: energy choices are made in one place but their effects travel (a coal plant warms a climate everywhere). The environment lens is the spine: the “stakeholders” include rivers, forests, birds, and the climate itself. Preview: next we turn from weighing to critiquing — reading an argument for what it leaves unsaid.

Procedure

1. Recall (5 min). From Lesson 2: what are the four steps of weighing? Say them in order.
2. Meet the cases (10 min). Read the three case cards — a dam, a wind farm, a forest kept standing. For each, underline one benefit and one harm for people, and one benefit or harm for the planet.
3. Worked example (10 min). Watch one weighing done step by step for the dam: (a) benefit — electricity for many homes and water for crops; (b) harm — a valley is flooded, and people who lived there are displaced; (c) who gains and who loses — distant electricity users gain, the valley’s people and its river lose; (d) judge — is the trade-off justifiable, and what would make it fairer?
4. Guided practice (15 min). In a pair, weigh the wind farm using the same four steps aloud. Agree on a judgment, then switch and weigh the forest.
5. Independent practice (10 min). In your journal, weigh one choice in four sentences: a benefit, a harm, who bears each, and your reasoned judgment. Mark yourself “not yet” if you skipped a step.
6. Close (5 min). Share judgments in a small group. Notice: the same facts can support more than one defensible judgment — the skill is seeing the costs clearly, not agreeing on one answer.

Differentiation

• Support: Provide the four-step sentence starters from Lesson 2 and a pre-filled example to annotate.
• Extension: Weigh the same choice for a different stakeholder (a bird, a farmer, a child in another country) and say how the judgment shifts.
• Expression: Learners who do not speak aloud can write the four steps, sort printed benefit/harm slips onto the sheet, or have a partner read their written judgment — no step requires the voice.

Assessment

• Formative (peer + self): Can the learner name a benefit and a harm for people and for the planet, say who bears each, and defend a judgment?
• Portfolio artifact (unit): The four-sentence environment weighing, added to the ethical- reasoning portfolio.

Home connection

Ask a family member: what in our home uses energy, and where do they think it comes from? Name one benefit and one harm of that source together.

Resources

• On climate-warming greenhouse gases from fossil fuels: IPCC, https://www.ipcc.ch/ (S-005).
• On worked examples and guided practice: Kirschner, Sweller & Clark (2006), https://doi.org/10.1207/s15326985ep4102_1 (S-011).
• On spaced retrieval: Dunlosky et al. (2013), https://doi.org/10.1177/1529100612453266 (S-039).